January 17th, 1993, "A Man Alone"
Fiver by div1701 (I never heard of this guy either)
Even if you throw out all of the mischaracterizations in this episode, it just doesn't work. Mob mentalities have to be written very carefully, and it's not in this case.
The Episode
DAX: Julian, you and I have to have a talk about Trills and relationships.
BASHIR: Fine. We'll do it over supper. Quark has found me this delightfully dry champagne estate bottled on Korris One.
Only mention of Korris One. This would've been a great time to namedrop a TOS planet. Platonus from "Platos Stepchildren" comes to mind immediately. FYI, Platonus didn't actually have a name until Star Trek Maps in 1980.
BASHIR: What is this?
DAX: An Altonian brain teaser.
BASHIR: A brain teaser?
DAX: A puzzle.
BASHIR: A puzzle? I love puzzles. How does it work?
DAX: It responds to neural theta waves. The goal is to turn the sphere into a solid colour.
I'm glad that this whole "dispassionate intellectual" thing for Dax didn't last long. Especially when we know that none of the previous hosts were like that.
That being said, the idea of a holodeck using specific kinds of thoughts as game inputs is a little creepy. Besides, this puzzle thing doesn't seem to warrant a whole holosuite, surely you could build this into a tabletop projector like kaltoh.
DAX: That's all. I've been trying to master it on and off for, oh, a hundred and forty years. Would you care to try?
In 2230 the host was Tobin, but from what we know of the previous hosts this seems more like a Lela thing (150 years ago).
BASHIR: Your hands are cold.
DAX: It's a peculiarity of the Trill.
This whole "Trill blood runs cold" thing was always odd to me, especially given the amount of time that she spends on Risa.
ODO: Business is good, Quark. You're almost making an honest living.
QUARK: A lot of new faces.
ODO: The wormhole does bring them our way, doesn't it?
QUARK: Everybody wants a piece of the new frontier.
ODO: And I'm sure you've already tried to sell it to a few of them.
This raises an interesting question. Who sets the rules about who can profit from the Gamma Quadrant? Back in "The Price" everyone was acting like the Barzan deserved all profit from their wormhole. Has Bajor declared a tariff on goods going through the wormhole? Furthermore, by now you have to wonder why the Federation hasn't mounted an extensive exploration expedition into the Gamma Quadrant to at least know what governments operate over there. By all means don't mention the Dominion yet, but someone like the Karemma should've been established early.
O'BRIEN: We made the decision together.
KEIKO: Not true. That's not true. You decided and asked me to agree with it.
Yeah, this is nonsense. Keiko is a Federation scientist who spent years among Starfleet officers. When she married Miles they should've agreed on what happens when he inevitably gets transferred. If Keiko can only be happy married to Miles when they're serving on a family starship, they never should've moved here in the first place. Furthermore, I refuse to believe that O'Brien is the best choice for this post. Just because he's fought the Cardassians doesn't mean that he knows their tech better than any other engineer in the fleet.
And let's get this out of the way right now: a noncommisioned officer shouldn't be chief engineer of anything. Transporter chief and part of the "inner circle" of engineering by all means, but not Chief Engineer.
QUARK: You've never coupled?
ODO: Choose not to. Too many compromises. You want to watch the karo-net tournament, she wants to listen to music, so you compromise. You listen to music. You like Earth jazz, she prefers Klingon opera, so you compromise. You listen to Klingon opera. So here you were ready to have a nice night watching the karo-net match and you wind up spending an agonising night listening to Klingon opera.
Only mention of karo-net. It sounds like this would be a Bajoran game, but we don't even know that. I guess springball hasn't been invented yet.
I always hated this speech. Is this how relationships work on Cardassia? I can't see Cardassians liking Klingon Opera. Furthermore, when did Odo observe couples like this? Cardassians don't seem to have "work at the same post" as a priority. If anything Odo would've seen more Bajoran mistresses where this sort of thing wouldn't come up.
(Sisko and Dax are on the upper level, and Quark makes an appreciative growl)
ODO: Don't even think about it.
QUARK: I can so think about it.
ODO: You might as well try to find a drink of water on the Yadozi desert. Besides I'd say our new Commander is interested in her.
QUARK: Not at all. I know for a fact, when she was a he, you know, before she got this new body, they were old friends.
ODO: Things change.
Only mention of the Yadozi desert, why not mention Vulcan's Forge here?
Sisko and Jadzia never made sense as a couple to me. Sisko may accept Jadzia as a woman, but the idea of kissing Curzon would be repulsive to him. And frankly Ben isn't ready to date again yet. He just came to terms with Jennifer's death a couple weeks ago!
DAX: Steamed azna will put years on your life.
SISKO: Dax, I don't want years on my life if I can only eat steamed azna. Sautéed, rolloped, fricasseed, fine. But not steamed.
Rolloped is a fictional method of cooking, probably unique to Bajor. The Urban Dictionary says that rolloping means to hit someone with a roll.
ODO: I don't want you on this station.
IBUDAN: Yeah, well that's too bad, because I have every right to be here.
ODO: I decide who has rights and who doesn't on this Promenade.
IBUDAN: You'd better ask your Federation superiors about that one.
This is totally not Odo. He's authoritarian, not power-mad.
ODO: You have twenty-six hours to get off this station.
Did they ever establish that Bajoran days are 26 hours long, or did they leave this to us to assume?
O'BRIEN: Look, I'm willing to ask for a transfer if that'll make you happy.
KEIKO: That's not fair either. You'd have to give up your promotion.
O'BRIEN: Not necessarily.
KEIKO: I wish I knew the right thing to do. I'm just lost here. Starfleet doesn't need a botanist on this station.
What promotion? O'Brien won't be promoted from Chief Petty Officer to Master Chief Petty officer for another four years. Transfers are not promotions.
KEIKO: Do you really want to raise your daughter in this place, Miles?
I get it, Keiko will soon become a teacher, but that doesn't negate the effect on Molly. Furthermore, why couldn't they stay on the Enterprise while Miles serves here? It's established over on TNG that they do visit DS9 from time to time offscreen. Picard is invested in rebuilding Bajor, he'd find reasons to come back.
(Nog has bought a confection on a stick from a kiosk)
Glop on a sticks (yeah yeah, "jumja stick") played a much bigger role behind the scenes than what actually appeared on screen. The Star Trek Cookbook says make maple syrup sugar candy on a stick.
What interests me is why these things seem to be manufactured as opposed to replicated. Is jumja sap one of those things that can't be replicated precisely?
SISKO: If he hasn't done anything wrong, you can't just arbitrarily force him to leave.
ODO: Watch me.
SISKO: Mister Odo, you're not going to take the law into your own hands.
ODO: The law? Commander, laws change depending on who's making them. Cardassians one day, Federation the next. But justice is justice, and as long as I'm in charge of security.
SISKO: If you can't work within the rules, I'll find someone who can.
Oh boy, there's a lot to unpack here. Odo is supposed to be interested in the order provided by law, but this "I'm the ultimate arbiter of what's right and wrong" stuff doesn't match what we will know of him OR why the Bajorans respect him so much. I refer you to "Things Past" in particular.
JAKE: What are they?
NOG: Garanian bolites. Come on.
Only appearance of Garanian bolites. Even the expanded universe didn't make use of them, although they got an entry (like everything else) in an RPG supplement.
BASHIR: I guess I know the competition now.
DAX: What are you talking about, Julian?
BASHIR: Did you have a nice dinner with Commander Sisko?
DAX: Julian, Trills do not look for romance the way humans do. In fact, we find it quite a nuisance.
BASHIR: A nuisance?
DAX: It's a weakness of the young, and although a Trill host may have these feelings occasionally, it is our wish to live on a higher plane, to try to rise above these kinds of temptations.
Okay, here's the thing. If Trill symbiotes repress sexual and romantic feelings in their hosts, that would be a big strike against being joined. A Trill wants to be joined to gain wisdom, not to have to sacrifice humanoid pleasures or their very sense of self-identity. The very notion is horrifying. Furthermore, it's a further disjoint from the Trill from "The Host." Why didn't they just change the name of the species again?
SISKO [OC]: We need medical assistance above the bar in holosuite four.
I'm pretty sure Quark owns the only holosuites on the station. This seems redundant.
BASHIR: Cause of death's no mystery. The knife was thrust directly between the left and right thoracic vertebrae, perforating the lower ventricle of the heart.
The thoracic vertebrae are the ones in your ribcage and neck There really aren't "left" and "right" vertebrae, unless you're going to tell me that Bajorans have two parallel spines and you can stab between.